With approximately 60% of French stating that concerns around data confidentiality and privacy dissuade them from buying online and 64% stating that sites without sufficient payment security also drive them to restrict their online purchases, there’s definitely a market need for services that help mitigate these concerns. Sensing a big opportunity, the global leader of reference in information management services Experian, is bringing their online fraud protection solution DataPatrol to France.

Targeted at ecommerce vendors, financial institutions, and insurance companies, Experian is looking for these target customers to use DataPatrol as a way to reinforce their offer to their clients. The way it works is that each month DataPatrol monitors millions of non-secure webpages containing personal information, identifies subscribers to their service most at risk, and instantaneously alterts them via email or SMS if their personal details/information have been stolen and/or put out in the public domain. The primary information DataPatrol monitors is:

Experian is looking to its customers to include this service as an add-on or key component of their offer to potential customers. So, presumably, if a customer opens a bank account and begins to access it online, DataPatrol would be positioned as a complementary service giving them better protection for and control over all of their personal and financial information. No word on whether the price for this would be absorbed by Experian’s customer(s) or the end-user.

Regardless of who pays, one really useful aspect of this solution is that it also monitors social networks where, in France, anxieties around privacy and data protection are particularly pronounced. One thing that is clear though is that DataPatrol is merely a tool, albeit a powerful one, to help users know what’s going on with their information online. As with other data, reputation, etc monitoring services, the user still needs to be an active participant in keeping their online data safe.